Bersih to protest redelineation report

Group to submit memo to Parliament on why it should not pass proposals

PETALING JAYA: Bersih 2.0 will submit a memorandum against the Election Commission’s (EC) redelineation report to Parliament on Wednesday.

The memorandum, said Bersih, would give reasons why Parliament should not pass the recommendations in the report.

It claimed that the EC had not respected the Federal Constitution’s stipulation requiring a twoyear period between giving public notice of the redelineation and submitting the report to the Prime Minister.

“The EC published the notice on Sept 15, 2016. It has about six more months to complete its work (until Sept 14, 2018).

“Bersih urges all Malaysians to join us at the gates of Parliament as we submit a memorandum to the Speaker,” it said here yesterday.

A motion on the redelineation report, which was made available to MPs, was supposed to have been tabled for first reading on Thursday.

It has now been put off until the coming Wednesday.

The motion only needs a simple majority of 111 MPs to go through and does not need the approval of the Senate.

Once passed, the report will be gazetted upon receiving Royal Assent.

Bersih said there were currently cases pending in courts over the redelineation process carried out by the EC, with one having 107 plain tiffs representing 10,000 voters.

The Speaker, it said, should not allow the tabling of the report until all legal challenges were heard in court and decided by the judiciary.

Accusing the EC of submitting the report to the Prime Minister in bad faith while the cases were still pending, Bersih said it had also failed to hear objections from the public.